Storm Season Has Started. Is Your Garden Ready?
The Met Office released its storm names for the 2026-27 season on 1 September. The first three on the list are Austen, Boelo, and Chloe. If recent years are anything to go by, we will be hearing at least a few of those names before spring.
Storm Eowyn in January 2025 toppled more than 10,000 trees across National Trust properties alone. Gusts hit 100mph at Drumalbin in Lanarkshire, and Northern Ireland saw its most powerful wind storm since the Boxing Day storm of 1998. Closer to home, the south-east regularly takes a battering from Atlantic storms between October and February. Hertfordshire may sit inland, but that does not make it immune. The county’s mature tree stock, heavy clay soils, and densely built residential streets mean that when a tree does fail, the consequences tend to be expensive, disruptive, or both.
The pattern is always the same. The tree looked fine in summer. Nobody noticed the dead limb in the upper crown, the crack where a major branch meets the trunk, or the subtle lean that had developed over the last few years. Then the first serious gale arrives, saturated soil loosens the root plate, wind loads the canopy, and something gives.
The damage is rarely random. Trees that fail in storms almost always had an underlying weakness before the wind exposed it. The wind is the trigger, not the cause. That distinction matters, because it means the risk is often identifiable and manageable well in advance.
September is the window.
What to look for in your garden
You do not need to be an arborist to spot the obvious warning signs. Walk around your garden and look up. Dead branches in the upper canopy are the most common source of storm-related damage to property. Deadwood is brittle, has no leaves, and the bark is often cracked or missing entirely. A dead limb can hang in a canopy for years and come down without warning in the first strong wind. It does not need a named storm. A sharp autumn gust is enough.
Look at the major branch unions, the points where large limbs meet the trunk. A tight, V-shaped union with bark growing inward between the two stems is structurally weaker than a wide, U-shaped union. Trees with included bark unions are more prone to splitting under wind load, particularly if both stems carry heavy canopies.
Check the base of the trunk and the exposed root plate. If you spotted fungal brackets or mushrooms on or around the tree last autumn, as we wrote about recently, that is a sign of internal decay that warrants professional assessment before storm season. A tree with a compromised root system can look perfectly healthy above ground and still fail in moderate wind because the roots can no longer anchor the weight of the canopy.
Heavy ivy covering the trunk and lower branches is not necessarily a problem in itself, but it adds sail area and, more importantly, it hides the things you need to see. Cracks, cavities, old wounds, fungal fruiting bodies, and bark damage can all be concealed behind a wall of evergreen growth. If you have a large tree near a building, a boundary, or a frequently used area, and the trunk is completely hidden by ivy, that tree cannot be properly assessed until the ivy is addressed.
Finally, notice any lean. Most trees lean to some degree and always have. The concern is when a tree has developed a new lean, particularly if it coincides with soil movement, root severance from recent building work, or a change in the surrounding ground level. A tree that has leaned gradually over decades has adapted its structure to compensate. A tree that has shifted recently has not.
What professional preparation looks like
For homeowners with one or two small garden trees, a visual check and some basic deadwood removal may be all that is needed. For larger trees, mature specimens close to buildings, or trees with obvious signs of structural concern, a professional assessment is the sensible step.
An arborist will carry out a ground-level inspection and may use sounding techniques or specialist tools like a resistograph to assess internal decay. Based on that assessment, the options typically fall into three categories.
Deadwooding is the removal of dead, dying, or broken branches from the canopy. It is the most straightforward intervention and the one with the most immediate benefit for storm safety. Dead branches are unpredictable, they carry no leaves to act as a visual warning of a weak point, and they can drop without any wind at all. Removing them before autumn storms arrive is basic risk management.
Crown reduction reduces the overall height and spread of the canopy by cutting back to suitable growth points, retaining the tree’s natural shape. Done properly to BS 3998 (the British Standard for tree work), a crown reduction lowers the wind loading on the trunk and root system without butchering the tree. It is not topping, which involves cutting back to stubs and is widely condemned as harmful and ineffective. A well-executed crown reduction is almost invisible to anyone who was not watching the work being done.
In some cases, managed removal is the right answer. A tree that is structurally unsound, extensively decayed, or in a location where failure would cause serious damage or risk to people may need to come down. That is not a failure of care. It is a practical decision based on evidence. We carry out planned removals, including sectional dismantling in confined spaces, across Hertfordshire. It is always better to take a tree down in a controlled way than to deal with the aftermath of an uncontrolled failure in a storm.
The cost of waiting
Emergency call-outs after storm damage are significantly more expensive than planned work. They also tend to involve more disruption, more risk to the crew, and less control over the outcome. A branch that comes through a conservatory roof at 2am on a Saturday in November is not going to be dealt with cheaply or conveniently.
Insurance may cover the property damage, but it rarely covers the cost of removing the tree or the follow-on work to neighbouring properties, fences, and gardens. And if the tree was obviously dead, visibly decayed, or had a known defect that was not addressed, the insurer may have questions about the claim.
There is also the question of liability. Homeowners have a duty of care to ensure that trees on their property do not pose an unreasonable risk to others. That includes neighbours, pedestrians on the pavement, and anyone else who might be affected by a tree failure. “I did not know it was a problem” is not a strong defence if the signs were visible and no inspection had been carried out.
Get your trees checked before the storms arrive
At Evoke, we carry out pre-storm tree inspections across Hertfordshire, from residential gardens in Welwyn Garden City, St Albans, and Harpenden to commercial estates, schools, and public land. We are Arboricultural Association Approved Contractors, and our work follows BS 3998 and Visual Tree Assessment methodology.
If you have mature trees near buildings, boundaries, or areas where people spend time, September and early October is the time to get them looked at. By November, the storms may already be here.
Call us on 01707 708202 or get in touch through our website. A conversation costs nothing. An unmanaged tree failure costs considerably more.
